^LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 

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? UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 



j^lDDEESS 




WAR, THE UNION, AND THE RESTORATION OF PEACE, 

Pelivered on the occasion of a Complimentary Serenade to him, at the 
Monumental Hotel, Richmond, on the night of June 22, 1865. 

[From the RichmoiKl RcpnbHc- ] 



A large crowd in tlie street having called Mr. Segar out, he spoke as 
follows : 

Fellow-citizens — tor, thank God, we are all' fellow-citizens once more 
— God be praised ten thousand times — from pine-forest Maine to golden 
California, we are once again one people. Fellow-citizens, I say, what 
do you want with me, a poor vituperated Union man, here to night? This 
cruel v/ar, blessed be God, is at last at an end. The stream of brothers' 
blood which has been reddening our waters for more than four years has 
ceased to flow. 'J'he genius of peace hovers once more over our land. 
Why should you now invade the slumbers; in which I hoped to dream, 
under the auspices of a new peace, of the future glory of pur country, and 
the restored happiness of Qur people? Do you want a speech from me? 
If so, you reckon without your host? I am not "on my foot " for a 
speech. Like the rebellion, I am used up; I am fatigued, wearied down, 
in helping my friends of that small, but compact and patriotic body, the 
General Assembly of Virginia, in the good work of reconstruction ; and I 
am in such joy at the idea that that small, but gallant embodiment of loy- 
alty has laid deep and broad the foundations of reconstruction and re- 
union, that I am almost beside myself. Besides, what am I to talk to you 
about ? [A voice — We came here to compliment you for your uncompro- 



'S^-6^ 



mising' devotion to tlie Uniuii.] Oh ! well, il that's all, 1 can make this 
speech as " short as pie-crust," as the saying is. I deserve no credit for 
standing by the Stars and Stripes in the great conflict. The road that 
pointed to Union was to my poor eyes as plain as the road to the parish 
church, and the more I looked at it, the more lustrous, and yet more lus- 
trous, it seemed. It M'as so lighted up, so radiant, that I could not, for 
the life of me, help following it. There was another road pointed out to 
me by my fellow-citizens of Virginia, which was boggy and craggy, beset 
with cavernous precipices, that bedizzened the head as you approached 
their brink — a road bestrewed with ruin and sprinkled with blood at every 
step, along which the genius of murder, and of want, and of starvation, and 
of ruin, met you at every move. It was the Secession, Disunion road. I 
could not travel it, fellow-citizens. It was too hard a road for me, " Jordan 
(they say) is a hard road to travel," but this Secession road was a far 
harder road to travel than the road to Jordan. And so, having two roads 
before me, I chose the Union road. My friends in old Virginia told me 
it was the wrong road, and that when I got to the end of it I would find 
myself " in a bad box," perhaps with a halter around my neck. But I 
said no ; you are travelling the wrong road. It will lead you to death 
and ruin. It will lead you to seas of blood; it will conduct you to the 
graves of your fathers, your sons, and your brothers. It will lead the 
heart-stricken mother in agony to the half-covered grave of her, perhaps, 
only son. And 1 tell you, if you follow it through, your property will be 
all gone, and you will not have a "nigger" left, and you will, beside, 
get, in the end, perhaps, one of the biggest thrashings that ever a people 
had, and will be so dispirited and broken down when you get to the end 
of it, that you won't have spirit to call your lives your own. And so it 
was I took the Union road. And I had no misgiving, because, when I 
came to the fork of the road, I beheld a huge sign-board, marked with big 
letters of living light, directing me which way to go, on which were writ- 
ten these words ; " You, Joseph Segar, one of my sons and citizens, must 
obey the Constitution and Laws of the United States, anything in my 
constitution and my laws to the contrary notwithstanding." So that 
while I have been villified beyond degree by my fellow-citizens of my 
own dear, native land for not going with them into Secession, I have the 
clear authority, the peremptory order, of my mother, Virginia, for what I 
did. She gave me the worjd of command, and if I did not wheel right, it 
was her fault— not mine. And in what I did I have nothing to regret or 
take back. God forbid ! On the contrary, let me now here declare to 
my calumniators and all the world, that I would not take in exchange for 
the honor and glory of my position in this great struggle for the Union, 
all the gold that ever glittered in the mines of California, or that shall be 
gathered from them to the end of time. 



And now, fellow-citizens, as you command me to speak, allow me to 
put in a word " on ray own hook." As I have had the misfortune to have 
been much condemned for separating from ray State in this matter of Se- 
cession, I propose to propound to those who have passed hard sentence 
upon me a few interrogatories, not in a spirit of malignity, for I have no 
unkind feeling for a single one of my fellow-citizens of my State. If they 
will only admit that I saw a little farther into the millstone than they did, 
I am satisfied, and forgive them. But the answers to the questions I pro- 
pose will not only vindicate all of us who stood by the Stars and Stripes, 
but may teach us a moral that will redound to our lasting good. 

"First. Why did we go into Secession? I have never heard a sensible 
reason for it. I do not know yet why the South went into Secession. 
When in the Legislature in 1861, I challenged all the leading Secession- 
ists in that body to send up to the library and bring down the statute 
books and show the United States law that invaded a Southern right. No 
one accepted the challenge, and so it was conceded thai there was no cause 
for the rebellion. This vindicates me and all others who, like me, 
chose to stand by the old flag. Let us not commit this great folly again ! 

Next, what have we Southern people gained by secession ? It may be a 
little cruel to ask the question, but I do ask it, and I have the right to ask it and 
I have the right to demand that the Secessionists answer it. What then, 
have we gained by secession ? W^e were told that we could make slavery 
safer. It was not safe enough under the Constitution. No. We must 
make it safer. Safe, safer, safest: that's what we want, and must have. 
And how is it now? W^hy, we have not a ''nigger" left, and you and 1, and 
all other once owners of slaves, have to black our own shoes — "shine them 
up," as the shoe-blacks say — and, Cuffee being gone, to feed, curry, saddle 
and harness our own " critters!" Glorious privileges these we have won 
by Secession I The privileges of polishing our own calf-skins and har- 
nessing and hitching up our own teams I Glorious secession! All hail 
to secession 1 In my country, fellow-citizens, when a man makes an 
extra effort to do a thing, and does nothing, we say " he made a water haul." 
And so with our Southern brethren when they went into secession to make 
slavery safer, they made a water haul. The moral is — I trust never to be 
forgotten — that when our property and other rights are safe, don't, by 
violence, attempt to make them safer. " Better let well enough alone!" 

But we want commercial independence. We are tributary to the North. 
We must throw off the shackles of commercial thraldom. Well, fellow- 
citizens of the South, have you got commercial independence by secession ! 
At the time of General Lee's surrender what port held you open to com- 
merce? But now that the war is at an end, let us go ahead and seek com- 
merce and commercial independence by employing the proper instrumen- 



talities of commerce — those instrumentalities that have placed our Northern 
brethren, in this regard, so far ahead of us. 

But you wanted political independence. Have you got it? But, in 
tenderness to uiy fellow-citizens, who halve so much diflPered from me, I for- 
bear to press the question. 

That is what you Southern people have gained by Secession. Let us see 
what we — I mean the Union men of the United States — have gained by 
secession and the cival war it provoked. Have we gained nothing ? I say 
that, settle the account when we will — strike the balance when we may — 
there will be found a heavy balance in our favor. This war has cost us 
oceans of blood and billions of treasure. We have reddened every South- 
ern stream with brother's blood. AVe have sent agony to millions of 
hearts. We have made Woe the goddess at millions of hearth-stones. We 
have furrowed every field with the graves of dear ones who kissed the earth 
on the fatal battle-field. We have made a nation of widows, orphans and 
cripples. We have incurred a debt which a man can scarcely count in his 
day and generation, and yet I hold it to be demonstrable that we are largely 
gainers by the rebellion. 

We have an ofiset which far overbalances the money and blood, the 
desolation and ruin, this awful rebellion has cost us. 

In the first place, we have knocked the resolutions of '98 " into a cocked 
hat," as the saying runs. Not "into the middle of next week," but of the 
next century. The pernicious doctrines of these resolutions are the very 
germ of that treason which has ripened into matured rebellion and insurrec- 
tion. They have, ever and anon, taught our young men lessons of treason. 
They have been all the time the ladder by which the ambitious young men 
of the South have sought to reach political distinction. But, thank this re- 
bellion ! these resolutions are now '' cold as a wedge " — " dead as a mackerel." 
There is no danger that they will resurrect I " Alas ! poor Yorrick ! " 

AVe have gained in this, that the people of the United States have shown 
their unalterable purpose, at all hazards, and at whatever cost, to maintain 
the Union of these States. They have incurred, without a murmur, a debt 
of billions. They have sent to the battle-fields of AVashington's Union 
a million and more of men. They have looked war, yea, civil war, with its 
thousand horrors, full in the face. The English of all this is, that, come 
what will, the Union must and shall be preserved, and our Southern brethren 
will never forget the lesson while they lire. They see that the people of 
the United States mean to be one people to the end of time ; and they not 
only see that they cherish the purpose to maintain an unbroken nationality 
to the last, but that they have the poiver to make that purpose elTcctual. 

We have gained in this, that we have taught our Southern brethren to 
know and sec that there is such a thin^; as treason nr-ainst the Ihiited States. 



i6 

Heretofore — that is from 1798 to this hour- — the Southern people have been 
taught that the intervention of a State by secession or nullification would 
relieve a citizen from the commission of treason, and hold him harmless. 
The resolutions of '98 were referred to as allowing any one State to break 
up the Union at her will, and of course to shield her citizens from the con- 
sequences of treason. That fatal hallucination is gone I No more will the 
men of the South be deluded by it, and inveigled by it, into rebellion and 
treason ! For the resolutions of '98 they will gladly substitute the political 
maxims of Washington, and Madison, and Marshall, and cling evermore 
to the Union. w ■!""'^;i ''u n.oii 

But the grand gain — a corollary from the fttregoing reasoning and fkc^ 
— -wiW he the pcrpetucd peace that we have ivon by this rebellion, toicked 
a8 it is. We shall have peace at home, and peace abroad, in long, long 
time to come. Our Southern brethren, and all sympathisers with them, 
will see in the result of the late struggle the utter hopelessness of any fu- 
ture attempt at disunion, and the nations of the Old World will perceive 
in the demonstrations of mighty power made by the results of the rebellion 
that we are a match for the entire world, and, seeing this, they will be all 
the while on their good behavior. Southern rebellion has already bowed 
its head low to the earth, and France and England, with cap in hand, are 
at this moment bowing and scraping to us. 1 repeat, this rebellion, with all 
its cost of blood and money, has given us perpetual, eternal peace. And so 
I dare assert that we are better off with the rebellion and its results than 
we would have been had it never happened. Therefore we may, all of us, 
North and South, not only accept the result of the great conflict, but rise 
from its ruins with the stirring hope that all is not lost, and that rich stores 
of national blessing yet await us. 

And we are, inexpressibly, gainers by the abolishment of slavery. This 
may seem strange doctrine to come from a native Virginian 'and life-long 
slaveholder. But so it is. Without going into a discussion of the legality 
of the mode by which slavery has been abolished, I am bound, as an 
honest man, to say that, with all the lights before me and around me, the 
policy of emancipation, as an economical question, is the policy for the 
while men of the South. I speak from experience and observation. In 
my own county, where emancipation has been in practical operation from 
the commencement of the war, and on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, 
where the policy has been fairly tested, it is an ascertained fact that the 
farmers make more clear money with hired colored labor than they did 
when they cultivated the farms with their own slaves. The profit is gen- 
erally doubled ; in some cases trebled. 

What is to be the result of the radical change in the labor system of the 
South, no one can lorsee. I am frank to confess I at first thought it Avouhl 



be attended with shock and revulsion, and unsettling disturbance. But I 
distrust the correctness of my original opinion. I incline now to the idea 
founded on practical observation, that the whole relation between master 
and servant may be so disposed of as to avoid crush and crash, and im- 
prove the condition of both races. Make the negro work — which the 
Govei-nment seems disposed to do, and which necessity will make him do — 
require l)oth. white and black mutually to observe their contracts one with 
the other — let the white men give the colored men fair wages, and other- 
wise treat them kindly — which it is their interest to do — and the transi- 
tion from slave to free labor will no "tale of ruin tell," and the country 
will be freed almost unconsciously of one of the greatest evils, that ever 
afflicted and cursed it. 

And now, fellow-citizens, to come nearer home, I congratulate you 
upon the prospect of an early return to civil government, law, and order, 
and to the glorious Union of our fatliers. A kw short months, and 
this restoration will be yours. It will be made under the auspices of the 
Restored Government of the State, headed by Governor Peirpoint. Some, 
I am aware, object to this medium of restoration ; but what care you about 
the mode if you can attain the great good? The legislative body of this 
Restored Gover^iment, it is true, is small, but it is as large, I believe, as 
that of our little sister, Delaware ; and you should recollect that this Re- 
stored Government was a loyal formation — the best we loyal men of East- 
ern Virginia could, under the circumstances, do. We could not go with 
you against the Stars and Stripes, and so, rather than have a military gov- 
ernment, we set up a loyal civil government of our own. It was, seem- 
ingly, a small affair, but it was founded on the principle that the loyal 
people of a State are the people of the State. This principle the Con- 
federate Government and the whole South have acknowledged. Mr. Rus- 
sell, a resident of West Virginia, was admitted a member of the Confed- 
erate Congress, and members were admitted to that Congress from Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, elected by the votes of a few soldiers in 
the field or a score of rebel voters at home, on the principle, and that only, 
that the loyalty of a State is the State itself. We are small, it is true, but 
we are a nucleus for reconstruction and reunion, and you should bear in 
mind the couplet we used to read in the English reader when we were 
boys : 

"Large streams from little fountains flow, 
Tall oaks from little acorns grow." 

You have in Governor Peirpoint a man of ability, and character, and 
heart; and if he can have your confidence, as I am sure he will, and if you 
will continue to exhibit, as I am yet surer you will, a Kiuccre submission to 



the results as they liavc transpired, you will soon forget the trials of the 
late unhappy strife, and be happy again. 

The Legislature now assembled, small as it is, has shown much wisdom 
generosity and statesmanship towards their fellow-citizens of their State. 
They have admitted to the right of suffrage nearly the whole people of the 
State heretofore disfranchised. They have, in fine, put the people of Vir- 
ginia on the same platform on which President Johnson has placed the peo- 
ple of North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, and together, I 
trust, you will all return to the Union of our fathers, chastened somewhat, 
but the wiser for the chastening you have passed. 

Fellow-citizens, for one, I am in high hope. The skies seem to me 
" bright and brightening." With the teaching experience we have had 
and above all, with that great incubus and cause of disquiet removed — 
slavery — I am convinced that our great country will go on prospering and 
to prosper, growing and to grow, strengthening and to strengthen, becoming 
each year greater and greater, until, bounding up and bounding on, it shall 
attain an eminence " not dreamed of in any man's philosophy." 



